Basking in the quiet of the weekend

Sunday

The woman working the check-out desk at West Yarmouth library was too kind to say it, but my selections of books and DVDs made it pretty clear that I was struggling with my shadow side.

The woman working the check-out desk at West Yarmouth library was too kind to say it, but my selections of books and DVDs made it pretty clear that I was struggling with my shadow side.

In one pile, I had stacked several blow-'em-up action movies — Mission: Impossible III, 16 Blocks, the entire Godfather collection — and in another, I had placed a collection of books on mediation from Joel Goldsmith, Joel and Michelle Levey, and John White.

I was anticipating a busy weekend.

I planned to do some indoor work — quilting and cleaning, in that order — as well as treating myself to some long walks with the dog, but even during my brief stop at the library, I couldn't keep to one side of the emotional road or the other. The larger world of economic crises and military adventures — not to mention my own, immediate, overblown stresses — was wearing on me, and deep down, I think, I couldn't figure out whether it would be more satisfying to erupt from desperate frustration or settle down with a deep-breathing practice.

By the close of the weekend, I'd had a little of both. But the thing that worked best was getting outdoors and walking the beach and the bog. I stole out just after noon, shrugging off my responsibility of keeping a tidy house for the joy of beachcombing and letting my mind wander with the sound of the waves and the wind.

It was an ordinary mid-winter day on the Cape, cold enough and blustery at the shore, with less than full sun — the kind of afternoon that makes you feel you are peering at the world through flimsy muslin or frosted glass: all sharp lines softened, all the stark forms kindly blurred.

The dog drifted off into the eel grass and subjected the edge of the beach to a thorough investigation, sniffing along, stopping, padding a little farther, slowly falling behind my desultory amble. As she trotted along happily, the featherings of her red tail were flung up in the wind, mimicking the rocking and tipping of the phragmites in the distance.

I worked my way down the beach, stopping by the neighbors' property long enough to plop down in the beach chairs that have been perched in the sand all winter, their empty promise facing off with the cold sea for months. I lounged there for a moment, closed my eyes and raised my face to the sky, hoping for a little sun and basking in the wind's wash over me.

It was not quiet, but I was. It was not still, but I was calmed. The clamor of the gulls, the whisper of the swash, the whine of my boots in the sand: I became intensely aware of the intricacy of my simple outing and how only attention made me significant in it. And then more: I forgot my small, split self in the circle of breath and light.

I had been sitting for less than five minutes, holding nothing but the flow of air and the voice of water, but everything in that brief stop — myself, the uninhabited horizon, the dissipating hour — had been filled by the boisterous quiet, peopled by the companionable, uncrowded silence. The dog wandered back and stood behind my beach chair, her nose into the wind, calmly waiting for me to complete the business we'd set out to do: a walk to the jetty, or with luck, beyond.

No words spilled into the wind, and for an instant even my mind seemed to discard everything but silence. I stirred; the dog perked up; we resumed our walk. We re-entered the natural calculation of the afternoon, an arithmetic of peace.

Moments like these, added one to another to another, build to a sum that at last yields serenity. It costs nothing but exacts from us the openness to silence and listening, the discipline of both concentrating and letting go. It is a formula that fits stillness or walking; it is the suggestion of eternity.

For this, we return to the beach, the bog, the wood — anywhere that our pursuits seem incidental. In nature, I am lucky to be next to nothing. This nothing is all.

North Cairn's Nature column runs every Sunday. She can be reached at ncairn@capecodonline.com.

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